Nathaniel Turner wanted more than just a judgment day of mass murder.
He was not out for personal, petty revenge. One can not even say that was true
of Will Francis, the Executioner. His biographer F. Roy Johnson also knew that it took time for a lesson to
sink in. Though his men may have lacked discipline necessary for a more killing
machine, Turner himself was a master of
self-control, his mind difficult to know.

Turner staged a divine drama in
which slaveowners were forced to live as they had forced Africans and their
Christian slaves to live. From 22 August 1831 until his death 11 November 1831,
Turner directed the course of events. Turner had disappeared for two reasons: 1) to
sustain the terror and misgivings among Christian slaveholders; and 2) to
prepare himself for his "atonement," his martyrdom, in the public
realm. In this scheme, he
was most successful. After more than a century and a half he chills white
sentiment in Southampton, Virginia, and throughout America.

On the spiritual and psychological levels, Turner’s
disappearance had an even greater impact than the actual fifty-five persons
murdered in Southampton. The living are not so concerned with the dead when they
feel their own lives are at the stake. During Turner's seventy days, a single gun
shot was enough to fill the neighborhood with apprehension and anxiety. Many
women, expecting "Ole Nat" was coming, "ran into the swamps with their
children" (Johnson, p. 144).

Again, we see God’s "divine
reversal." Nathaniel Turner’s terror forced Christian slaveholders to live the
same experiential hell that was the daily diet of the Christian slave—the uncertainty,
the horror, and terror that these black captives endured moment by moment, year in and year
out. Turner pressed the faces of Christian slaveholders against the mirror of
their lives. Their blindness with regard to their slaves’ spiritual
aspirations caused the remaining slaveholders of Cross Keys, many a sleepless
night.

Turner considered the means by which to turn himself in and
to whom. F. Roy Johnson also believed in the truth of this scenario. Johnson,
however, was mistaken about Turner’s ultimate intent and goal. Turner had
experienced the slaughter of Cross Keys slaveholders—men, women, and children
he had lived among. He observed the death of his men on the battlefield,
silently spied upon the counter-terror and the massive armed forces tramping
over the county, waited out the trials and hangings, and the dispersal of the
armed forces. Turner was the last of the seven men who had left Cabin Pond, two
had died on the battlefield and four hanged. His aim was not to lose himself in the
Dismal Swamp.

When interest in his capture waned, Turner made his presence
known. It was then then that he with deliberation chose the person to whom he would surrender himself. Rather
than Francis, Turner chose Benjamin Phipps, a non-slaveholder, as his captor.
The traditional story of Turner’s inadvertent capture must be rejected, even
though that is what Turner contended in his "Confessions." Consider
the situation that makes Phipps inadvertent capture unlikely.

Anyone walking in a forest, especially in autumn can be heard
at great distances, not only because of the natural silence but also because of
fallen leaves and the noise they make under footfall. In addition, Turner was an
experienced woodsman and that he should be come upon unexpectedly is unlikely.
So one must conclude that the preposterous
tale of surprise was part of a ruse in order to get his story told more broadly and
from his perspective, as we see in his "Confessions." It was a case of
"hoodooing the hoodoo man"—
the "hoodoo man" in this case
being the state apparatus that had characterization goals with regard to Turner, his Christian soldiers,
and his holy war.

Turner’s choice for his captor was sound. A
non-slaveholder, Benjamin Phipps was a white man with little means and in great
need of the thousand dollars on Turner’s head. Symbolically, it was the right
approach. Phipps and other poor whites were also oppressed and misused by
slaveholders. Turner captured alive was exceedingly important for the State of
Virginia. The State bounty on Turner’s head would be paid only if Turner was
delivered alive.

Because of Phipps’ need, there was little likelihood that
Turner would be killed on the spot. The poorer whites must have also noted that
none of their class was killed during the "insurrection."

Phipps and
his people, a class below the medium-sized landowners, would assure that Turner
arrived in Jerusalem alive. For as Johnson pointed out, "the trials of Nat’s
confederates had not satisfied the public curiosity as to the origin and purpose
of the conspiracy—leaving everything ‘wrapt in mystery’" (The Nat
Turner Slave Insurrection, p. 146).

Turner also wanted a
record of his life as a Christian slave. He wanted the public to know
the role God had played through him in the world. He had been waiting
most of his life to tell his story. It was also an aspect of his desire
"to atone," to live the righteous life.
Turner wanted to justify his faith, to justify God’s work in history.
This calculated view, of course,
runs against the current view that Gray, the slaveowner and lawyer, initiated
the project of the "Confessions."

The coupe de grace for him
was to find an audience in which to establish his identity as a Christian
prophet. Having sufficiently prepared himself spiritually for what he had to
endure, Turner, after seventy days, turned himself in.

There were dire and immediate circumstances in which Turner
had to endure before he reached his Calvary. Certainly, he had his fears. His
disappearance of seventy days was a period not unlike that which Jesus
experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane. The mockery and the abuse from
slaveowners and their sycophants had to be undergone. According to F. Roy
Johnson, "Nat was soundly whipped. He "was taken to Cross Keys and
from thence ‘from house to house, grinning and refusing to repent’."

Turner must have been exceedingly hurt and disappointedly the vile responses of some Christian
slaves, those who knew better. But, of course, Turner understood the lie that
some had to live to go on to the next day. According to Johnson, "The
Negroes who had lost relatives and friends and some of their personal liberties
because of his misguided leadership, also treated him with scorn." There
were still other more horrendous stories of torture. In one story, Nat "was
rolled down a hill in a barrel punctured with nails" (The Nat Turner
Slave Insurrection, p. 144).

Before Turner arrived Monday, 31 October 1831, in Jerusalem,
"The news of his journey was broadcast ahead, and people of the
countrysides turned out to taunt and revile" him. "Some beat on him
with sticks, and others jabbed him with pins." Persons in the gathered mob
burned him with hot irons, gashed him with knives, and thrust hot coals in his
mouth, according to other reports. "The fanatical black preacher,"
Johnson wrote, "assuredly held his spirit aloof with the conviction that he
was a martyr" (The Nat Turner Slave Insurrection, pp. 144-145; 180).

Nathaniel Turner suffered much from Cross Keys to Jerusalem as did Jesus from the
Garden of Gethsemane to Golgotha Hill, the place where criminals were crucified.
"Whatever the treatment, a Petersburg citizen said that the rebel leader
arrived in Jerusalem in a state of extreme debasement—dejected, emaciated and
ragged" (Johnson, p. 180). Through it all Turner retained his integrity and
dignity.

By the time he spoke to Gray in Jerusalem, Turner had gone
through hell. He had only two things undone: his testament and his death. He
completed the "Confessions" with this existential state of mind:
"I am here loaded with chains, and willing to suffer the fate that awaits
me." Like his fellow Christian soldiers, Turner believed he was assured a
place within the celestial community. "Clothed with rags and covered with
chains," Turner, according to Gray, dared "to raise his manacled hands
to heaven, with a spirit soaring above the attributes of man." Turner
prayed to be delivered from this shore of mortality.

Shamed and found guilty by slaveowners, Nathaniel Turner, God’s
apostle to America, would have found solace in the following prayer and song:
"Let me not be ashamed, O Lord, for I have called upon thee: let the wicked be
ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave" (Psalms 31.17). Turner and Gray completed "The Confessions of Nat
Turner" in three days, 1-3 November 1831. Only the trial and the execution
remained. The trial was Saturday, 5 November 1831. "The execution was
ordered to be held Friday, November 11, between ten in the morning and two in
the afternoon . . . . A value of $375, something less than the price of a prime
slave, was placed upon the condemned to be paid to the Putnam Moore estate. . .
. two of Nat’s condemned confederates were hanged upon the appointed day with
him," according to F. Roy Johnson (The Nat Turner Slave Insurrection,
p. 149).

After sentencing, Virginia gave John Brown a month to get his affairs
in order. Seven days after his sentence was delivered, with two Christian free
men, Nathaniel Turner, however, was taken from prison to a nearby tree, where he gave
up the ghost. Turner’s atonement was a symbolical reenactment of Jesus’
crucifixion.

Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy."

Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly